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Just discovered this thread - my mum's been big into genealogy for a while, and a few months ago I got the bug too. We're collaboratively working on both her side of the family and my dad's side, and I feel quite lucky in that she is very rigorous in terms of not jumping to conclusions and making sure there's enough proof for connections. The http://www.freereg.org.uk/ site (which I only discovered thanks to this thread) seems really cool, parish registers have been so helpful. Has anyone dabbled in the DNA side of things? I've done Ancestry's autosomal DNA test which basically showed about what I'd expect (Mostly British, about a Third Irish, and the rest a mix of Western European and Scandinavian), although to anyone else doing that test i'd say bear in mind that there's a lot of overlap in the areas they designate, for example my "scandinavian" or "Western European" is just as likely to be "British"... and their "Irish" also covers Scotland and Wales. The branch we've had the most trouble with is my maternal grandmother, who was born in Ireland (but would never talk about her family) - we've managed to get to about 1850 with them but sadly due to records either being not digitised or having been destroyed over the years that looks like it may be as far as we're likely to get. The furthest back we've got is I think the early 16th century, although I'm British one of my great great great x whatever uncles was an early settler in Massachusetts so that branch of the family have done a metric fuckton of research. I haven't discovered anything that interesting to an outsider, but you can uncover some really interesting stories. One of my ancestorsdeserved to win a Darwin award... he made a bet to walk a mile, run a mile and swim a mile, which he succeeded at, and then promptly dropped down dead leaving a pregnant widow in his wake. Owlkill fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Feb 12, 2017 |
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Feb 12, 2017 17:55
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Speaking of naming conventions, I've noticed that in certain branches of my family tree (mostly based around the English Midlands and Cheshire/Lancashire) there's a tendency for sons to take the mother's maiden name as a middle name. Does anyone know if this is 'a thing'? In my tree it seems to happen a lot in the 18th/early 19th centuries but I have a friend alive today whose middle name is his mother's maiden name.
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Jun 2, 2017 10:12
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My particular bugbear currently is Victorian/Edwardian Irish names. The women are all Elizabeth or Mary, the men are all James or John and the surnames are all really common ones like Byrne or Kennedy or Reilly.
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Jun 5, 2017 15:41
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Bilirubin posted:An article on the surprises that may come with "recreational genomics": https://www.washingtonpost.com/clas...m=.4a280d7f68ae Thanks for sharing, that's really interesting! When I did my Ancestry test it came back about 50% "British", 30% "Irish" and 20% "Western European" which is basically what I expected as the paper trail shows my ancestors to be all English, Irish or Welsh so far. Still, I'm doing research and combing through old Parish records I often find myself wondering how different my biological family tree may be to the one based on the "official" records, even if it's not quite as drastic as that example.
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Aug 1, 2017 00:26
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Oracle posted:I go into it more in my DNA post in the African-American Genealogy thread here but 'Western European' is probably as close to accurate as most people are going to get without a paper trail to back it up (never mind countries like France flat out banned DNA testing for recreational purposes). Thanks, that's a really interesting post. I'm definitely aware that W. Europeans are pretty much a hodgepodge, as you say, I'm not taking my whatever percentage of "Western European" DNA to mean granny slept with a Frenchman or anything like that. I've just upgraded to the Y37 test on FTDNA as my surname is really common and we can only get back to about 1800 on my paternal line before we hit a brick wall. I did the 12 and found my haplogroup was basically the most common one in Western Europe so I'm hoping narrowing it down a more specific segment will yield some results and if not then I'll just have to resign myself to having no clue where my particular instance of my surname came from.
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Aug 2, 2017 14:00
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Bilirubin posted:2) if her tree is right that "English" lineage were actually Norman, and thus back to the large percentage of Scandanavian haplotypes Well another thing to remember here is that the Normans, while originally Scandinavian, settled in northern France, so that's already adding to the genetic mix, and I don't think it's controversial to say they weren't exactly endogamous once they were in the British Isles. Though I guess maybe a lot of the Normans that came over would have been of a higher social class so who knows how much classism might have affected things in terms of who boned who. In terms of "British" genetics far as I'm aware the current view on the invasions of the British Isles is that it's not so much waves of Anglo Saxon/Viking invaders pushing back the native Britons as invaders from those cultures coming, and their languages and religions becoming dominant but basically the locals just adapt to whatever the norms of the latest overlord are, rather than packing up and loving off. So your Briton/Anglo Saxon/Viking/Norman ancestors will all have been screwing around with each other.
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Aug 4, 2017 22:23
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Re. MyHeritage it does seem a lot cleaner and more attractive than Ancestry. My only concern is that the data available isn't as relevant for me - in terms of UK and Ireland datasets it seems like it's quite limited to census data and some limited military stuff, is that about right? For anyone looking for UK records I'd definitely recommend findmypast.com - they've got census data but they've also got extensive parish records going back as far as the 16th century for a lot of places, as well as things like wills, apprentice registers, prison records and more. There's trials available and I think it's about £9 a month otherwise, or £10 for international record access. Definitely worth it for what I've got out of it. Bilirubin posted:Sadly, that makes me a direct decendent of two officers who fought in the Indian Wars. What karmic debt do I owe for that I wonder? I guess when you consider how many direct ancestors you have there's bound to be some people who've been involved in terrible things. I discovered the other day that my great-great-great grandfather was sentenced to 12 months hard labour in 1909 for indecently assaulting two women on the same day at the age of 69, as a family man with several children. I wonder what the worst thing (if they're willing to talk about it) fellow goons have turned up about their ancestors is?
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Aug 18, 2017 11:49
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Huxley posted:I was lucky enough to grow up in an area with a lot of people sharing my last name, but for it to be pretty uncommon beyond our town. That means a LOT of genealogy for my family was done for me when I made a school project of it back in middle school, and I really only needed to go back to my great grandfather to meet up with the documented line that just traveled on and on and on back. I just wrote all these names down when I was 12, but as an adult I've done more research on them and it's pretty rad! That's really awesome that you can trace one of your branches that far! With most of mine I can't get back beyond about 1700 (if lucky) though I have one branch with a many-times uncle who was one of the Massachusetts Bay Colony settler or something similar so a lot of work has been done there.
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Aug 25, 2017 00:32
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Does anyone know much about marriage traditions, especially in the British Isles? I'm particularly interested in who witnesses marriages. Once you get back beyond the 1841 census, you find yourself relying on parish registers for a lot of information, which can make it hard figuring out birthplaces. You can sometimes triangulate this based on marriage records, and you'll often see witnesses who share a surname with the bride/groom. Were there any rules about who could/couldn't do this? For example, could siblings act as witness each other's marriages? I've heard that uncles and aunts were common picks too, but I can't seem to find out if there was a standard notion of who would be the witness.
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Oct 19, 2017 10:39
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Oracle posted:Lots of useful stuff That’s really helpful/interesting, thanks. The bit about minors is especially useful; and I wasn’t clear on what the whole “marriage by license” thing meant either.
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Oct 20, 2017 08:54
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Does anyone know of an easy way to produce a GEDCOM that only shows direct line ancestors? My current GEDCOM file is based on my Ancestry tree, which includes siblings, cousins etc. I’d like to create a tree that just incorporates direct ancestors for the purposes of creating maps etc.
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Dec 21, 2017 18:13
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Does anyone have any tips on uncovering more information about my 4x great uncle, born in the UK but died in Illinois in 1867? My experience is limited to UK-based research so any ideas would be welcome. All we know about him for sure is his name (John Belshaw Buckley), that he was born in 1835 in Warrington, England, and died a farmer in Cook County, Illinois, in 1867 leaving his sub-£100 value estate to his wife Mary, who is listed as being in Warrington, England, on the probate record. In terms of Illinois/US records, I have identified a John B Buckley, born in England and the right age but listed as being unmarried and a saloon-keeper, who appears in an 1863 draft register document from Iroquois County. A John B Buckley also appears to have joined the 12th Illinois Cavalry in Cook County in December 1863 for a 3 year period, but was discharged for disability in June 1865. I’m trying to establish if these John B Buckleys are the same - it seems possible they are but I have no way of proving it at present. The non-draft register Civil War records literally just record the name unit, company and rank with no further information. Illinois only appears to have started recording deaths in 1877 so I have no info on the death aside from what appears in the probate record. Does anyone have any ideas for avenues I could explore to shed more light on the situation?
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Jan 17, 2018 12:15
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Thanks to both Oracle and ComradeCosmobot for your advice and information you've managed to dig up, it's very much appreciated. I've had quite a few breakthroughs as a result of what you've said - nothing entirely conclusive but all adding evidence. Also, Familysearch is a lot more useful for US records than UK ones! I've neglected it in the past. Through a bit of Googling and Wayback Machine use I managed to find the text of a book written in (I believe) roughly the 1880s, which is a history of Chebanse. There were a few key bits of information I got out of this: One is that the John Buckley who signed up in Chebanse survived the war but died of illness/wounds related to the war in Chicago (which I guess could account for the "of Chicago" bit in the probate). The other bit of info is that the Mary Buckley who appears on the census records was previously married to a George Carter, and married a John Buckley, described as "an English soldier" in 1860. I've tracked down the record of Mary Carter and John Buckley marrying in Kenkakee in July 1860. A findagrave search shows a George Carter, born in Lancashire, England, who died in Chebanse in 1859. Death records for both George and Mary's son James George and John and Mary's daughter Ida give Mary's name as "Bretherton", so this all seems to add up to Mary Buckley/Carter/Bretherton being the same person. Ida Buckley's death record also lists Warrington as the place of birth for both of her parents, which tallies up with my confirmed knowledge of John B Buckley. I also tracked down a newspaper story from 1886 about a Mrs Buckley of Chebanse being granted a widows' pension with a significant amount of backpay. When I did the maths it basically added up to how much she would have got had her husband died in 1867, which together with the previous info about a John Buckley from Chebanse dying in Chicago to me strongly suggests that Cook County John B Buckley and Chebanse John B Buckley are the same person. There's also the fact that in post-1867 censuses John Buckley disappears from Chebanse and we're left with Mary and the kids, with Mary listed as a Widow. John and Mary having a daughter named Ida is interesting as his sister, my great x whatever grandmother also had a daughter named Ida which suggests it could have been a family name (or just coincidence too I guess). The things I still can't quite square and make me hesitate to say I've definitively proved anything are John Buckley being described as a "farmer" in the probate record, and Mary Buckley being described as "of Warrington, England" - I wonder if this might be indicating where she was born rather than where she lived at the time. In terms of what I can do now, visiting records offices in person is a no-go as I live in London, but I'm toying with the idea of ordering the pension application we know Mary made, as looking at the amount of evidence and information that would have had to be provided it seems this could provide some definitive answers. It's fairly expensive and seems like it could take a fairly long time to come through but then again it also sounds like it could well answer a lot of the remaining questions. I'm also trying to track down John Buckley in British 19th century military records.
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Jan 18, 2018 21:13
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So the UK census data for 1921 has been released today, great news right? Except you have to pay £3.50 per individual record you want to access, and that's for a transcript, so if you want to view an image of the original record (which is quite useful as names often end up mistranscribed in the digitisation process), you have to stump up even more. This is because the National Archives partnered up with Findmypast to digitise the records, who apparently weren't content with the £10.5M of taxpayer money they were paid. And that £3.50 "microtransaction", as findmypast call it, is on top of any existing monthly or annual subscription you might have. Oh, you can access the census data for free if you go to actual physical records offices, but hardly any of them are offering that at present. Sounding very bitter here but it's a bit frustrating as apparently the next UK census to be made available won't be until 2052 (no census in 1941 and the 1931 records were destroyed in a fire).
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Jan 6, 2022 16:22
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